F.B.I. Director Warns of Russian Interference and White Supremacist Violence
“We certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020,” Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said on Thursday.
Wray, the director of the F.B.I., warned...on Thursday that Russia was actively pursuing a disinformation campaign against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and expressed alarm about violent extremist groups.
“Racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a majority of domestic terrorism threats. Mr. Wray... also echoed an intelligence community assessment last month that Russia was conducting a “very active” campaign to spread disinformation and interfere in the presidential election, with Mr. Biden as the primary target.
“We certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020,” Mr. Wray said, specifically “to both sow divisiveness and discord, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden in what the Russians see as a kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”
...A homeland security official has accused the Trump administration of soft-pedaling both the Russian and white supremacist threats because they would make “the president look bad.”
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[Wray] said the F.B.I. averaged roughly 1,000 domestic terrorism investigations annually and had recorded about 120 arrests on domestic terrorism suspicions this year....white supremacist and anti-government groups were the primary threats.
...White supremacists have carried out the most lethal attacks on American soil in recent years.
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...Mr. Wray said the intelligence community had reached a consensus that Russia was interfering in the election and targeting Mr. Biden.
Trump hits FBI director again over testimony on antifa, Russia
“We are looking at a lot of different things,” the president said about whether he was considering replacing Wray.
(Politico)
...“I did not like his answers yesterday. The fact is antifa is a bad group,” [Trump] said. “They’re bad, and when a man doesn’t say that, that bothers me. I wonder why he’s not saying that.”
[Trump] on Thursday night also swiped at Wray for testifying about Russia’s “very active efforts” to meddle in the upcoming election, primarily to undercut Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In a tweet, Trump said that countries like China pose a bigger election interference threat and told him to “Check it out!”
Trump reiterated that theme in his comments Friday, saying that “China is at the top of the list.”
“...the big problem is China, and why he doesn't want to say that, that certainly bothers me,” Trump said.
